The 1,000-bed US Navy hospital ship, the USNS Mercy, arrived at the Port of Los Angeles on March 27 to help relieve the burden that local hospitals have been facing as the number of coronavirus cases in California continues to rise.

Over 800 medical staff — including doctors, nurses, mariners, and corpsmen — are aboard the USNS Mercy to provide medical care to non-coronavirus patients in Los Angeles, according to the US Department of Defense.

This will allow local hospitals to focus its resources and Intensive Care Units (ICUs) on COVID-19 patients. Every patient who boards the ship will be screened accordingly.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom said on Monday that the state needs another 50,000 hospital beds in order to handle the increase of COVID-19 cases. Los Angeles alone is projected to have a hospital bed shortage of around 17,000, Los Angeles City Councilman Joe Buscaino told the Daily Breeze.

California's 416 hospitals currently have 75,000 beds. However, an extra 30,000 beds will soon be added across the state with a "hospital surge plan", the Los Angeles Times reported. The state will also be using mobile hospital units to create an additional 3,000 beds, and is now looking into potentially converting motels, hotels, and convention centers into temporary hospitals.

Keep scrolling to see the USNS Mercy:

The medical staff aboard the USNS Mercy will also include 70 "civil service mariners" and 140 volunteer Navy reservists, according to the US Department of Defense.

In 2005, the Mercy was deployed to Indonesia for humanitarian efforts in response to a tsunami and earthquake that carved its path through Southeast Asia, according to the US Agency for International Development.

Medics and a patient aboard the USNS Mercy in 2005 while at sea in the Indian Ocean.